How We Saw the World: Nine Native Stories of the Way Things Began

Kelly L. Green is co-author of The Ethical Shopper’s Guide to Canadian
Supermarket Products and associate editor of the Canadian Book Review
Annual.

C.J. Taylor, well known for her beautifully evocative retellings of
Native legends and her almost impossibly lovely paintings, lives up to
our highest expectations in this very ambitious volume of nine legends
about the beginnings of things from nine different North American Native
peoples.

Taylor has chosen stories that epitomize the special relationship each
tribe has with nature and the earth. For instance, the legend from the
Bella Coola tribe of British Columbia is about the creation of the
islands of the Pacific Coast, while the story from the Kiowa people of
the Great Plains is about the first tornado. Native or no, anyone who
has grown up in North America will feel the power of these legends to
express the beauty, grandeur, and, sometimes, terror of our unique
geography. The carefully chosen legends, representing tribes from almost
every geographic region of North America, combine with Taylor’s
magnificent paintings (which range from the breathtakingly realistic to
the fantastic) to make this book another exciting addition from Taylor
to literature on Native themes for young people.

The book will appeal to virtually all age groups, from kindergarten to
senior-high students. The stories can be compared to creation legends
from other cultures, or even to other Native legends. For instance,
Taylor has chosen a legend from the Blackfoot people about how horses
came into the world. The differences between her version and Jane
Yolen’s 1990 book Skydogs, which tells a very different legend about
the same topic from the Piegan people (also members of the Blackfoot
tribe), will fascinate children. The opportunities for discussion are
endless. Highly recommended.